Has the decline of knowledge work begun?

The vast majority of jobs that sustain our standard of living are blue-collar: farmers who grow our food, textile workers who make our clothes, construction workers who build our homes, plumbers, electricians, waste disposal workers, etc. I'd say it's white-collar work that became overinflated this past century, largely as a reaction to the automation and outsourcing of many traditional blue-collar roles.

Now, with white-collar jobs themselves increasingly at risk, it's unclear where people will turn. The economic pie continues to shrink, and I don't see that trend reversing.

It appears to me that our socio-economic model simply doesn't scale with technology. We need to have a constructive conversation about how to adapt.

> It appears to me that our socio-economic model simply doesn't scale with technology. We need to have a constructive conversation about how to adapt.

This doesn't add up with the number of billionaires and the growth over the last decades - it just seems that there's a bottleneck and the value captured from technology isn't trickling down.

Of course, you can claim that such "billionaires" and that part of that "value" is the result of speculation, but since billionaires can use that speculation to buy money and acquire more assets, then for sure there's some value there that isn't getting to the vast majority of the people.

My 2c is that most normal people are incapable of capturing this kind of value simply because they aren't educated enough on how to use a computer to do these things.

ChatGPT is the first time in a while that a new technology is easy enough to use and integrate that the productivity gains could be captured by the lowest-skilled workers.

Uber/Lyft are the antithesis of this: their apps do very simple things but at scale and with an eye towards confusing their drivers. It's not unthinkable that a co-op version of these apps could exist, but the folks with the skills to build them get snapped up by big tech pretty quick.

IMO if we want to share the wealth, the ONLY way to do it is by upskilling workers and simplifying technology.